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Audiobook Review: Lurk

Author: Adam Vine

Narrator: Kevin Meyer

Length: 9h 46m

Publisher: Lilydog Books⎮2017

Genre: Horror

Release date: Jan. 16, 2017

Some secrets should stay buried….

College student Drew Brady never wanted the power to spy on his friends. But late one night, he finds a box of old Polaroids buried under his house that can change to show him whatever he desires, and Drew finds himself with the power to watch the people around him without them ever knowing.

Yet as Drew falls deeper into the rabbit hole of jealousy and despair, he begins having strange visions of the students who lived at the house 20 years ago and the gruesome fates they met after moving out. He finds evidence of a stalker who may be living on the property. The line between reality and nightmare blurs. Drew realizes there is something under the house that is manipulating him through the pictures, an eldritch, not-quite-dead thing that will drive him to do unspeakable evil if he doesn’t look away….

Adam Vine was born in Petaluma, California. By day, he is a game writer and designer. He has lived in four different countries and visited almost thirty. His short fiction has appeared in various horror, science fiction, and literary fiction magazines and anthologies. When he is not writing, he is traveling, reading something icky, or teaching himself to play his mandolin. He currently lives in Germany.

A devoted Midwesterner, raised in rural Wisconsin and transplanted to Tulsa, Oklahoma over three decades ago. A career-long voice-over and music radio guy, my iPhone playlist ranges from Alice Cooper and Waylon Jennings to Twenty One Pilots and The Zac Brown Band. Favorite reads are dominated by political biographies (Lincoln, Truman, Kennedy)…and Stephen King. And now Adam Vine…’cause day-um that Drew Brady is one twisted mother!

I was mentioning in some of my other articles that listening to audiobooks is a way for me to get out of my comfort zone and try some other type of books as well. After several reviews, I find it to be very true. I probably would not have picked a horror book otherwise, but at least in case of „Lurk”, I would have missed a great one.

As the description says, a group of college students notice someone has been spending nights in their basement and also a bunch of Polaroids showing the old gang that used to live in the same house. All is nice and well until Drew Brady discovers that the Polaroids can show much more than that and have the power to spy on their subjects also. The story gets even creepier when he starts having visions of old people and Bea (his all-time crush) is stalked by someone.

A bit of a trigger warning: we have a main character which is fat and has a history for mental illness. There is also a suicide which is described (with a fair amount of accuracy) in the book. So if you are not comfortable with these, you have been warned.

I wouldn’t say this was a scarry, scarry book. For someone not used to reading horror books, this is a decent one. The author manages to align the words with the emotions of our main character, whose point of view we have. Narrated from his point of view, Drew feels alone, even if surrounded by his friends. All the other characters have a typical teenage behavior: drink, somoke, party, repeat. But Drew is far more complex.

This character opens up a door to some other problems that young people may face these days. With a history of mental illness and a weight complex Drew becomes jealous of his best friend Jay when he starts dating Bea. Even if the girl of his dreams never showed an interest beyond friendship, he starts hating them for this relationship. I believe he is the best example of a person who understands he has issues, but doesn’t do anything to overcome his insecurities. The author did a great job creating this complex character, which, if analyzed in detail, can become a great study case J

The narrator did a good job wen telling this story, even if the voice acting was not that good. Sometimes I was a little confused because I did not realize who was speaking, but that was ok. I had no problems, however, to understand the message and that’s more important.

Ok, rating time. I would go with a 3.5 stars for the narration and 4.5 for the book. I loved the main character, I love having things to analyze in a book outside of the story. Somehow I would have wanted more… horror. So a total of 4 stars for the complete audio version of this book, with my congratulations to the author and narrator for a great work!